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Therefore we must ascend again towards the Good, the desired
of every Soul. Anyone that has seen This, knows what I intend
when I say that it is beautiful. Even the desire of it is to be
desired as a Good. To attain it is for those that will take the
upward path, who will set all their forces towards it, who will
divest themselves of all that we have put on in our descent:- so,
to those that approach the Holy Celebrations of the Mysteries,
there are appointed purifications and the laying aside of the
garments worn before, and the entry in nakedness- until, passing,
on the upward way, all that is other than the God, each in the
solitude of himself shall behold that solitary-dwelling
Existence, the Apart, the Unmingled, the Pure, that from Which
all things depend, for Which all look and live and act and know,
the Source of Life and of Intellection and of Being.
And one that shall know this vision- with what passion of love
shall he not be seized, with what pang of desire, what longing to
be molten into one with This, what wondering delight! If he that
has never seen this Being must hunger for It as for all his
welfare, he that has known must love and reverence It as the very
Beauty; he will be flooded with awe and gladness, stricken by a
salutary terror; he loves with a veritable love, with sharp
desire; all other loves than this he must despise, and disdain
all that once seemed fair.
This, indeed, is the mood even of those who, having witnessed the
manifestation of Gods or Supernals, can never again feel the old
delight in the comeliness of material forms: what then are we to
think of one that contemplates Absolute Beauty in Its essential
integrity, no accumulation of flesh and matter, no dweller on
earth or in the heavens- so perfect Its purity- far above all
such things in that they are non-essential, composite, not primal
but descending from This?
Beholding this Being- the Choragos of all Existence, the
Self-Intent that ever gives forth and never takes- resting, rapt,
in the vision and possession of so lofty a loveliness, growing to
Its likeness, what Beauty can the soul yet lack? For This, the
Beauty supreme, the absolute, and the primal, fashions Its lovers
to Beauty and makes them also worthy of love.
And for This, the sternest and the uttermost combat is set before
the Souls; all our labour is for This, lest we be left without
part in this noblest vision, which to attain is to be blessed in
the blissful sight, which to fail of is to fail utterly.
For not he that has failed of the joy that is in colour or in
visible forms, not he that has failed of power or of honours or
of kingdom has failed, but only he that has failed of only This,
for Whose winning he should renounce kingdoms and command over
earth and ocean and sky, if only, spurning the world of sense
from beneath his feet, and straining to This, he may see.
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